Wolf Among the Stars-ARC (26 page)

It didn’t last. The Kappainu could not stand up under this kind of fighting. They scattered, and all at once Andrew and the half-dozen or so who still followed him found themselves in the clear.

They had broken into what was clearly a control center, oblong in shape, the side walls a mass of instrumentation and consoles. But Andrew had no eyes for any of that. At the far end were figures. One was a human female, tall and slender, her left arm pulled up behind her in what was obviously a painful hold by a short, compact male who, Andrew knew, was only seemingly human. For a split second her eyes and Andrew’s locked.

“Rachel,” he gasped, then shouted at his followers, “Hold your fire!” He advanced slowly. “Let her go, Valdes.”

Valdes brought up his right hand from behind his captive. It held a laser pistol—Earth manufacture, Andrew automatically noted—whose muzzle he instantly pressed against her head. “One more step and her brain is deep-fried.”

Andrew halted but didn’t drop his M-15A. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Morales had Valdes covered with her M-3. “We’re taking you with us, Valdes,” he said evenly. “If Ms. Arnstein is released unharmed, we’ll be as nice about it as possible.”

“Otherwise . . .” What Gallivan put into that one word would have chilled the blood of anyone who knew humans half as well as Andrew thought Valdes surely must.

“No, you’re not taking me, Roark. I’m leaving through that hatchway a few feet behind me. After which, you’re welcome to Ms. Arnstein—I’ll push her back through the hatch as I’m going out. The hatch is heavily armored, by the way—nothing you’ve got will be able to break it open so you can follow me.”

Andrew risked a small step forward, betting that Valdes wouldn’t throw away his shield lightly. “You know, we’re really trying to do you a favor. If you stay here, you’ll die along with everyone else on this station. Even as we speak, my people back in the hangar bay are planting a nuclear device—”

“Oh, come on, Roark!
That
ploy again? Reislon used it before, but this time—”

“This time, knowing precisely what we were getting into, wouldn’t we have been stupid
not
to do it? It’s no bluff now. We brought a bomb with a very short detonation sequence, which we plan to initiate just as our ship departs.” Looking closely, Andrew saw that the Kappainu simulation of the human body was perfect right down to the ability to sweat.

“You’re lying! But just in case you aren’t . . . I think I’ll keep Ms. Arnstein with me, after all. You won’t blow up the station with her aboard it.”

“Are you sure of that?” Andrew dared not meet Rachel’s eyes.

“Besides,” Valdes went on, “blowing it up wouldn’t do you as much good as you think. You may have noticed that the hangar decks are largely empty. That’s because our warships are almost all deployed. We’ve been doing extensive patrolling ever since
Broadsword
escaped.” Andrew forced himself not to let his relief show and hoped everyone else was doing the same. “I’m sure you didn’t come here unsupported, but any stealthed Rogovon rebel forces will find themselves in difficulties as soon as you lead us to them by rendezvousing with them.”

“That won’t do you, personally, much good,” Andrew pointed out.

“Oh, I was planning to depart anyway, aboard my personal ship. Legislative Assemblyman Valdes’s junket in the outer solar system is due to end shortly. I’ll simply advance my schedule . . . leaving Ms. Arnstein here, of course. And now . . .” Valdes began to back away toward the hatch, carefully keeping Rachel positioned so as to make it impossible for Andrew or Morales to risk a head shot.

In doing so, he left himself open to Reislon, who could hardly do any precision shooting with his flamer.

With a single motion, the Lokar dropped the flamer to the deck with a clang and brought up his left arm. With a crackling snap, a burst of slivers from his implanted needler whipped past Rachel’s cheek at a distance of millimeters and through Valdes’s laser pistol and the hand holding it.

The Kappainu’s hand didn’t even have time to bleed before reconfiguring itself around the tiny holes. But it startled him, and the laser pistol was knocked out of line before he could press the firing stud.

Rachel broke free and brought an elbow back into Valdes’s midriff. At the same instant, Morales sprang forward like a leopard, dropping her M-3 so as to use her good arm to grip his right wrist and wrench the laser pistol from it. Together, the two women wrestled him to the deck.

Andrew touched the human-seeming forehead with the muzzle of his M-15A. “If you try to transform back into your natural shape, I’ll destroy your brain. We happen to know that instantaneous death halts the process and leaves you in human form.” Valdes only glared.

Andrew noted a trickle of blood from a hairline cut on Rachel’s cheek. “You took an awful chance with that shot,” he remarked to Reislon.

“My weapon implant incorporates a neural targeting feature that projects crosshairs directly onto my optic nerve,” the Lokar explained. “It’s quite accurate.”

“I’m glad you risked it,” said Rachel. “Thank you. Thank you all.” For an instant her eyes met Andrew’s, and what he saw caused warmth to seep back into his soul.

“Let’s get back to the ship,” he said gruffly.

“First,” said Gallivan, “we might want to make certain our friend here can’t raise an alarm about our little surprise package.” With his knife he cut two strips from Valdes’s sleeve. One he used as a gag, the other to tie Valdes’s wrists behind him. While he worked, Andrew spoke into his wrist communicator to Lieutenant Davis, in charge at the ship.

“The hangar bay is still secured, sir,” reported the very young officer in a commendably steady voice. “They’ve got all the exits—including the one you went through—blocked off, and they’ve tried a couple of probing attacks, but not very hard. Maybe they’re afraid we’ll use the ship’s lasers again if they succeed in breaking in.”

“Sit tight and prepare for immediate departure—and for activation of the detonation sequence. We’re on our way. Out.” Andrew turned to what was left of Section One. “All right. Let’s go. Reislon, bring up the rear. On your way out, use your flamer’s last fuel on this control center.”

They returned the way they had come, through devastated compartments and passageways, seeing few Kappainu. Valdes’s hostage value proved sufficient to get them past those few without resistance. Then they were nearing the hangar bay, and Andrew could see the Kappainu barricade ahead.

Andrew grabbed Valdes by one upper arm and shoved him forward while holding his M-15A to his head. “Attention!” he yelled. “We have Valdes. If we are fired on, he dies!”

He didn’t really have any reasonable hope that any of the Kappainu up ahead understood English. But apparently his tone and the sight of Valdes were enough. The Kappainu parted for them, and they stepped over the barricade warily. Just ahead was the open hatchway with the hangar bay beyond it.

Just about there
, Andrew thought, trying not to let relief weaken him.

“Watch him,” Andrew ordered and stepped up toward the hatch, activating his wrist communicator. “Hold your fire,” he ordered Davis. “It’s us. We’re coming through.”

Someone uttered an exclamation behind him. He swung around just in time to see Valdes wrench his gag off with his free hands.

So they can vary the size of their wrists and hands just enough to slip out of bonds,
flashed through his mind in some tiny fraction of a second.

Valdes yelled something in his own language as he lunged back toward the barricade. Andrew suspected a rough translation would be:
“Stop them! They’ve planted a bomb!”

Morales lunged, grabbing awkwardly with her left arm. With unerring viciousness, Valdes punched her where the patch showed she had been wounded. With a strangled gasp of pain she staggered backward, dropping her M-3. Valdes scooped it up and swung it toward her.

Gallivan flung himself forward, pushing her down out of the line of fire, just in time to take the hypervelocity bullet meant for her. It struck his inner right thigh just below the groin, and he collapsed to the deck just as Valdes turned and sprinted back toward the barricade, where the Kappainu were standing in indecision, hesitant to use their weapons with him in the line of fire.

Rachel, who had been standing frozen, broke into a run and took Gallivan under the left shoulder. Morales took him under the right, and together they helped him hobble toward the hatch.

At that instant, Valdes cleared the barricade and an insanely short-range firefight erupted. Kozlowski took a laser beam full in the face and dropped like a poleaxed steer. The others sprayed the barricade with their M-15As, sending the surviving Kappainu crouching for cover.

“Move!” Andrew yelled. “Get to the ship.”

With a final blast of fire to keep the Kappainu down, they made for the hatch and emerged into the vastness of the hangar deck. With sudden inspiration, Andrew shouted, “Lieutenant Davis, use the shipboard lasers on the hatchway!” He did
not
shout it into the wrist communicator; it was for Valdes’s benefit.
That ought to get them moving back, away from the hatch,
he told himself,
unless Valdes figures out that we can’t really do it until we’re clear of the hatch ourselves.

The ploy seemed to be working. There was no pursuit from the hatch as they crossed the hangar deck toward
City of Osaka
at the best speed they could manage.
“Leave me and run,” Gallivan grated in his pain.

“Shut up,” snapped Morales.

Davis’s men closed in around them as they neared the ramp, covering their rear. Davis himself waited at the top of the ramp. He helped with Gallivan as they piled in.

“Is the bomb—?” Andrew began.

“Yes, sir,” Davis assured him. We found the best hiding place for it we could. It’s in the—”

“Never mind! Start the detonation sequence now. And give the hatch we came through a hit with one of the lasers. Then get us out of here.”

Davis spoke an order into the intercom as he headed for the control room. The ship trembled with the shock of abruptly heated air as the unique crack assaulted their ears. Andrew hoped the Kappainu, up to and especially Valdes, were just inside the hatch, but he wasn’t counting on it.

Andrew knelt beside Gallivan while Reislon applied his first-aid kit with the assistance of the medical corpsman who was the closest thing to a doctor the prize crew had. “The bullet must have just missed the femoral artery,” said the latter, “or you would already have bled to death.”

The Irishman looked down toward his groin. “Fortunately,” he said tightly, forcing his words past his pain, “it also just missed something else.”

“Lie still,” Andrew said. “You’ll be all right.”

“Of course I will.” Gallivan somehow managed a roguish grin at Morales and Rachel. “How could it be otherwise, with not one but two lovely angels of mercy?”

“I’ve got to get to the control room,” said Morales. For an instant her eyes and Gallivan’s held each other.

“I’ll stay with him,” Rachel told her.

“Get him to sick bay and strap him in for acceleration,” Andrew ordered. “Alana, you belong there, too. But come with me.”

Davis was nearing the end of the takeoff checklist and sounding the acceleration warning when Andrew, Morales and Reislon ran into the control room. Assuming the captain’s chair, Andrew ordered a final laser blast as they lifted off the hangar deck and slid through the atmosphere screen and into the featureless blackness beyond.

“Now straight outward—
fast!
” Andrew ordered. “Never mind about our heading for now.”

He wasn’t concerned with the station’s tractor beam, which the ship’s drive could overcome. But he was coldly certain that the only way to avoid annihilation by the station’s laser weapons was to get
City of Osaka
through their field of fire in very little time. Acceleration hit them.

But the laser fire was oddly uncoordinated, not the time-on-target salvo Andrew had feared. The ship’s deflection shield was able to handle it. He wondered if the command center Reislon had incinerated had contained crucial elements of the targeting cybernetics. Whatever the reason, he was in no mood to complain.

Then the station was no longer visible astern, and the stars appeared.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

City of Osaka
fled outward,
broadcasting its signal to Borthru, who presumably had already detected the ship’s emergence from the Kappainu station’s zone of nullity. Andrew ordered the acceleration cut to one gee—more was not needed, when their objective was to rendezvous with the Rogovon rebels. He also ordered Morales to join Gallivan in sick bay. She obeyed with less resistance than he had expected.

Just after she departed, Rachel made her way up to the control room. She really had no business there, but Andrew was disinclined to stand on regulations.
Maybe she needs to be here
, he thought.
Maybe I need for her to be here.

“Strap in,” he told her expressionlessly. “We may be in for some rough maneuvering if those warships Valdes mentioned come after us.”

“Right,” she acknowledged in a tone as neutral as his. She settled into the acceleration couch beside his, which Morales had vacated, and their eyes met warily. They both knew they had much to say to each other, but this was hardly the time or the place.

“It’s too bad Valdes got away,” she finally said as though seeking a safe conversation opener.

“Yes. Especially since, if he lived through our last laser blast, they’re now searching the hangar area frantically for our bomb.”

“Didn’t you say it had a short detonation sequence?”

“Yes, but we couldn’t make it
too
short, because we weren’t able to foresee the exact circumstances of our departure. We had to allow ourselves ample time to get clear.” Andrew glanced at the chronometer. “Still—”

“Incoming!”
yelled the rating manning the sensor station.

All at once the display board Zhygon had hooked up to the access key began to flash as the device detected the Kappainu fighting ships. It was set up to feed data directly to the tactical plot, and red “hostile” icons began to appear . . . all too many of them. Missiles were streaking ahead of them, grimly seeking
City of Osaka.